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Monday, October 3, 2016

“Do you ever wonder,” I asked Lady, “why there are so many
great female pianists? I know that sounds dismissive, but consider: from way
before Clara Schumann and right up to the present day, women have been at the
top of the piano world. But violin? Yes, today there are some great women
violinists, as there always have been, but nothing like the pianists. Anyway,
so it seems to me….”

“Well, perhaps it’s because the piano tended to be the
instrument that every comfortable home in the 19th and early 20th
centuries had to have. And since every woman was expected to play, there
naturally were more women pianists than, say, women oboists.”

We had just listened to Natalia Karp playing Chopin, and
there was melancholy in the air.

“So who was she,” asked Lady, “and what’s her story?
Wonderful, by the way, to see that posture at the keyboard….”

“She’s a true pianist,” I told her. “The problem with Chopin
is that you can’t be in the least mawkish: there’s so much expression and
feeling in the music that anything you add just pushes it over the top. On the
other hand, you can’t play it utterly straight—I mean, it’s not a Sousa march.
So getting that balance is really tricky. But she does, every time....”

“Maybe that’s it,” said Lady. “She plays with restraint, and
leaves you satisfied, but still wanting more….”

“A German woman once told her after a recital that she had
given as a young woman something like: My dear, you’re a wonderful pianist now,
and after you have lived, you’ll be a wonderful musician.”

“Ouch….”

“You know, it’s a very romantic notion, but I wonder if for
all of that it isn’t true. Because I have to watch all of these clips on
YouTube of six-year olds playing Liszt on the piano, and yes…it’s wonderful. It
would also be wonderful if we could devise a computer program that would play
music perfectly from a score. Or perhaps we have. Anyway, the point is that I
can’t think of a child prodigy that moved me, emotionally. And maybe that’s why
so few child prodigies turn out to be great musicians in adult life….”

“Well, she certainly seems to have lived, and probably to
have suffered.”

“When it came to suffering, they had to get the back hoe out
to shovel it into her life. She was born wealthy, which is always a tricky
thing….”

“Yeah?”

“Of course: let’s imagine she had been a Rothschild. Would
she ever have had the drive to succeed? Would she have been encouraged to? I
wonder, sometimes, whether great wealth hasn’t robbed us of great talent or
genius than poverty has….”

“Marc, honey, would you like me to take your fever?”

“OK—but you know what I mean. Anyway, Karp was a student of
Schnabel, and for pianists, there’s no higher accolade. So she made a career
for herself, or was beginning to, and then a series of misfortunes befell. Her
mother died, and then Natalia married, and her husband disapproved of her
playing professionally. More proof, by the way, that wealth….”

“He was wealthy?”

“Apparently, and certainly his family was. And so then her
husband died in a bomb raid. Then she got sent off to the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, along with her sister.
So someone tipped off the commandant that there was a concert pianist in the
camp, and then, half-starved, Natalia had to go to the party. Yes, there the
commandant was, and all the women beautifully dressed, and everybody on their
best behavior, drinking and smoking. And Natalia, who sat at the piano—for the
first time in several years….”

“What!”

“You
know, it’s such a good example of the—to us—almost unfathomable mindset of the
Germans,” I said. “The amazing ability of people to hold two completely
different ideas in their mind at the same time. Yes, because the commandant was
quite aware that he was killing Jews, whom he saw as little more than animals.
And at the same time, he was craving beauty and music, and petitioning a Jew to
provide it.”

“And
did she?”

“Yes,
and very slyly, she chose to play the Chopin Nocturne in C sharp minor, opus
posthumous.”

“Why
so sly?”

“Well,
she sad that she played it because it’s so sad, and she felt sad. But I think
there was another reason, of course. Remember, she hadn’t played in a couple of
years at least. And however good you are, you get rusty if you don’t play every
day. So she chose a piece that made—at least for the first couple
minutes—relatively few demands, technically. Smart move, really….”

“Did
it work?”

“Absolutely,
since the commandant of the camp, Amon Göth, was so moved that he told her,
‘you shall live.’”

“And
her response?”

“She
said, ‘and my sister, too.’ And so Göth agreed.”

“Hmm—the
champagne must have been flowing….”

“You
know, it’s great news for Karp and her sister, but what about all the other
people in the concentration camp? All of those mother and fathers and
children—humans, people with families, with dreams, with hope. Should being
able to play a Chopin nocturne really be your ticket out of the camps?”

“Of
course not. It’s hideously unfair. But there it is….”

“So
then what happened to her?”

“Well,
she married, had two children, and resumed her career. And while she may never
have gotten to the very top of the pianistic heap, she didn’t do badly, by any means.
And she must have been a strong character: she always wore short sleeves, and
refused to hide the tattoo that the Nazis had put on her. And she bought, soon
after her release from the camps, a pink handkerchief; it was a symbol, for
her, of her femininity, which despite the camps had survived. So she carried
the handkerchief out and placed it on the piano at every performance.”

“Wow—what
a story!”

“It
is, actually. Well, she died at age 96, which must have been a great
satisfaction. I mean, you really don’t want to survive the camps, just to be
hit by a bus the day after your release….”

“Absolutely!
Do you ever wonder, Marc: could you have survived the camps?”

“I
have no idea. From her daughter’s book, you get the sense that most of the
people in the camps were simply existing. They were so beaten down, so hungry,
so tire, and often so sick that—well, they were just putting one foot in front
of the other. And as horrible as that is, maybe—just maybe—there’s also a
compensation.”

“What?
How could there be?”

“You
know, when I broke my back, there was absolutely nothing but physical pain: the
worst I’ve ever had. But also, my world telescoped down: all I had to do was
breathe, survive, and live for another day. I did, and now I worry about money,
hurricanes in Haiti, Facebook posts from my son—all kinds of stupid stuff. So I
wonder if being in the camps wasn’t a bit like that. And whether the real
challenge wasn’t faced by people like Adam Czerniakow….”

Life, Death and Iguanas

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